Jayce Habich NST S13 - 2025 Formula Drift Atlanta Recap

Monday - Prep

​The 2025 season is upon us! It feels like two weeks ago we were washing off the dust and dirt from Utah. I want to say what an honor and privilege it is to be a NonStopTuning Driver. My team, First Air Motorsports, and I are super excited to be representing the brand as we tour the country burning tires! We’ve made some serious upgrades to the car this offseason to make the car immediately more competitive. We’ve added a quickchange, a built dogbox transmission, and a birthday cake style intake setup for more power! Looking forward to what this season holds. We arrived at 2pm after our 44 hr road trip from our hometown, Monroe, WA. My brother “Tuna” made the trip with me and drove during the night so we could get in early. Instead of going straight to the track, we headed over to Outlaw Garage to do a thorough nut and bolt check. Outlaw Garage is Taylor Hull’s shop, so it is equipped with a lift and any other tool we could ever need to make last-minute adjustments. After checking every nut and bolt on the car, I set the length on all our spare tie rods so in the event I bend one, the crew can easily replace it without worrying about measuring the toe-in-toe-out. We wrapped up the night with some test pulls on the new 200 shot of nitrous. The car felt FAST. Like dangerously fast. After a couple of pulls, we sent the logs over to our tuner and got a hotel for the night.

Tuesday - Tech/Pit Setup

​We grabbed the trailer from Taylor’s shop and got to the track in time for our tech appointment at 11 am. All was going smooth until they mentioned my Subframe was out of spec! I then realized that when I installed the quick change in the car, it was hitting the sway bar, so I used spacers that were supplied with the subframe and put it together. This made the subframe sit too high. The Tech Inspectors told us to return with the subframe height within spec, and I was good to go. I took the car to our pit spot, and unloaded all my tools. Brian Wills was our pit neighbor last season and again this year, so he came over and helped me dent the sway bar tube and pull the washers out. Big thank you to him. After we put it back together, I pulled through tech again and was given the green light. We packed up the trailer and took off to pick up our Fabricator/Crew Carlton from the airport and head back to our Airbnb.

Wednesday - Testing/Load In

​We grabbed my spotter from the airport at 6:30 am and drove through Atlanta traffic back to Road Atlanta to hook up to the trailer and tow the car across the street to Lanier Raceway. Our test time was from 9-11 am, but I didn't need the full time to know the car was ready. Lanier is a nice track, however, it’s an Oval. So it doesn't translate to the FD course. The only problem with the car was that it randomly ran on 7 cylinders. I put in an Amazon Alternator during the offseason, so we chalked it up to that and replaced it. I had a drivers' meeting at 1 pm, so I took off while the crew got their hard cards. A hard card is your credentials for going to all 4 rounds. After the driver’s meeting, I met the crew in the pits and brought all my wheels over to have fresh GT Radials installed. After we picked them up, we talked through our plan for the rest of the week. Our tow rig started leaking transmission fluid at some point during our journey, and with another road trip coming up, we decided to pull the transmission and replace the seal in the torque converter. We finished around 2 am just as it started to pour rain. We called it a night and zipped back to Airbnb.

Thursday - Practice

​Finally, time for some live reps. I’ve been driving my simulator as much as I can during the offseason, but there is no replacement for the real thing. We got to the track at 8 am for the track walk at 8:15 am. I don't pay much mind to the forecast because I’m one of the few Drivers who enjoys driving in the rain. Growing up driving and drifting in the Pacific Northwest rain is a constant possibility. I feel like rain evens the playing field, making it driver vs driver instead of car vs car. This year, Formula Drift added an outer zone on the rumbles coming down the hill as well as a touch-and-go leaving the Keyhole. This stops the lead driver from cutting the course down the hill to gap the car behind. I told my spotter the touch-and-go is a good idea, except, it does make the final transition a little more dangerous. That seemed to be the case as more cars hit the wall than ever before. During practice and comp, that wall took Kasey Kohl, Feras Qartoumy, Jack Shanahan, as well as myself. But we’ll get to that.

After walking the track, I got my picture taken for the broadcast, then jumped in my car to head up to practice. The seeding bracket was also today, however, we finished high enough in the standings last season to be automatically seeded in the top 32. This was nice because we knew we could just focus on dialing in the car instead of worrying about winning a battle to get into the top 32.

​We had two sessions of practice to work with. The first one was 9:45-11:15 am, and the second was from 1:15-2:45. The First lap of practice, my car was still misfiring. I brought it back to the pits, and the crew checked over everything and found that an ignition coil had worked itself loose. As a precaution, they then changed all of the coils and sent me back out. I did a couple more laps in the second session, but the misfire persisted. The good news is that the car felt amazing. I was linking the track just like the sim and staying on the door of people who would leave me in the dust last year. Not having the correct gearing last season really slowed my car down. With the quick change in the car this year, it just stays in the power. The second practice session ended, and we had to head back to the pits to watch the Seeding bracket. After a final nut and bolt check, the crew and I met up with Mike from NST at Texas Roadhouse for dinner. A couple of steaks and sweet teas later, we decided to head back to the Airbnb for some much-needed rest.

Friday - Competition Day

​Despite all of the forecasts calling for rain, we woke up to a dry, cloudy day. We all got to the track at 10 am and began setting up our pit area. The crew staged our merch area and loaded the truck for the hot pit while I was at the autograph session. I always love autograph sessions because you get to interact with fans of all ages. For some, it’s their first event, but others have been coming for 10+ years! As soon as autographs ended, I jumped back in my car and raced up to practice. It is important to get to practice as early as you can, or you will be stuck in the back of the line waiting for 40 drivers to go ahead of you. I ended up in the middle of the line running with Allen Boss. During my chase, I felt the motor start running on 7 cylinders again! Very frustrating, it felt like no matter what we changed, nothing worked. I pulled the car back into the pits for a final attempt at fixing it before our competition runs with Kelsey Rowlings. While pulling the ECU logs, Carlton noticed our problem only existed on the 200-shot of nitrous fuel map, we deduced that the 200-shot was pulling too much power. With practice time running out, we decided to turn off the 200 shot and run the 150 we ran all last season. My rationale was that I would rather have a car that fires on all 8 cylinders with less power than a more powerful car with a random misfire. The crew buttoned the car back up as I jumped in the driver's seat for one final practice lap. I got to the front of the line and noticed Kelsey was lined up in the chase position. This means she gets a chance to chase me right before we go into a live battle, good planning on her part. As I left the line, I immediately knew we had fixed the misfire. The car ran so well! I put down a heater lead, nailing all the zones while keeping a steady gap and giving myself and the crew a vote of confidence before we send it live in competition.

​The competition starts, and we are on the bottom left side of the bracket. This means we are the 7th or 8th battle of the day, so there were a couple of battles we got to watch before sending me to the line. The nitrous bottle we installed before battle had a leak, so we had to change it. Super glad we caught that before it all leaked out pre-battle. As I rolled to the line, I hit the nitrous purge and saw a white cloud indicating the spray was loaded and ready, easing my concerns and clearing my mind before battle. I chase first, so I line up in the left lane. I kind of have to line up crooked so I can see the start light over the air filter sticking out of my hood. I took off one light early, which is legal in the chase position, and gave me a great run on her going down the hill. I could have initiated a little closer, but I was still in a good spot coming up the hill into outer two. In outer two, Kelsey straightened and had to reinitiate, which allowed me to pull right up on her door in outer three. I was right where I needed to be on the inner clip and gave her a couple of taps on the door. The next transition was perfect, she filled the touch and go, and I was right on her door. One more transition to go. I still don’t exactly know what happened next. I went for the bumper sweep, and Kelsey’s rear bash bar became hooked on my front bash bar. Thinking I could still save it, I tried to back off, but we were hooked together like truck and trailer. Realizing all was lost, I tried my hardest to slow the car by grabbing both brakes as hard as I could before launching into the wall. It was the hardest impact I’ve ever had. Immediately after hitting, I noticed a fire in the engine bay, so I put my fingers on the fire suppression system and got ready to pull. Luckily, the fire went out before I pulled it because those cost thousands to replace. I exited the car and went to check on Kelsey; thank goodness she was alright. I then began taking videos to send to my crew so they could get replacements ready for a 5-minute timeout. As I investigated, I found too many things than we could realistically fix in a competition timeout, so I had the track crew take my car back to my pit area to assess the damage.

​The car was badly hurt. Pretty much everything suspension-wise in the right rear was toast. coilover, axle, tie rod, wheel, everything. Thankfully, we prepared this offseason to be able to rebuild the car if necessary, just didn't expect to be doing it so soon. That’s drifting though! The crew spent all night taking broken parts off and replacing them. We called it a night around 9 pm and went back to sleep. 

Saturday - Pro Day/Rebuilding

​Usually Saturday we hang out with the fans, watch pro, and have a kind of relaxed day after working so hard in the competition. We still got to interact with fans, but we were knee-deep in repairs. We arrived at the track around 10 am and resumed thrashing on the car. Now that we had a better idea of what all was broken, we made a plan for the coming days. With the car needing a frame shop, I decided to stay back in Atlanta through the week. That meant changing flights and arranging accommodations. After setting a plan, we continued to try to bend back what we could to get the rest of the rear suspension on to roll the car back in the trailer. After we finished,

I stopped over at the NonStopTuning booth to help out with their giveaway. At each event, you can come to the booth and grab a raffle ticket. Towards the end of the event, we choose one lucky winner to receive anything on the table they want for free! It’s an awesome opportunity to talk drifting directly with the fans and do some Q and A. Once the giveaway ended and everyone dispersed, we packed the car up and headed up to watch the Top 16 Pro competition.

​Overall, it was about as far from what we planned as you can get. However, I am incredibly proud of my crew. An event couldn’t go much worse than this one did and yet my crew didn’t so much as blink. They just kept their heads down until the job was done. I am lucky to have such a savage team by my side. Our NonStopTuning parts performed perfectly and looked even better while doing it. So happy to have the privilege of being their one and only driver this season. I can’t wait to get to New Jersey and perform like I know I can. We will be in the Seeding bracket, but it’s more of a blessing than a curse this year because Formula Drift is running the bracket to completion with 12 points on the line! It would be awesome to try and get some of the points back I missed out on in Atlanta. See you in New Jersey in a couple of weeks!

​WORDS: Jayce Habich
PHOTOS: @nickelbag_media, @johnhongproductions

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